Is This Hands-Free, Virus-Scanning Workplace the Future of the Office?

A good deal of companies are telling their staff to continue working from home, but even those workers who do return to the office could find that their surroundings are not quite as they once were. This, at least, is the hope of some Bucharest designers who have implemented almost 150 ‘Covid-free’ measures in a new office design, including hands-free door handles and thermal body cameras, which they hope to see being adopted by office planners around the world. The Guardian has the story.

Entering H3, a five-storey building in a western neighbourhood of the Romanian capital, is like learning the steps to a new dance. A flick of the wrist opens the door, and a red line marks the spot at which to stand from where a thermal body camera two metres away scans arrivals for signs of fever. Those who are ‘green-lighted’ can follow the tracks to the self-clean lift, step on one of two foot pads and be transported through the building, safe in the knowledge that a UV lighting disinfection system installed in the ventilation shafts is keeping them infection-free between floors.

Anyone whose head flashes red on the screen, however, is whisked away by a plastic-gloved ‘immune steward’ into a nearby quarantine room: a glass box with a panic button and its own internal ventilation system shut off from the rest of the building. A ‘Viruskiller’ apparatus on the wall, boasting three levels of fan strength, promises to remove anything nasty such as pollutants, mould or spores that may be infecting the air, with back up provided by a sanitising UV light on the wall.

This view of the future may alarm some. Modelled on hospital technology, is this sanitised environment a place to which employees will want to return once the pandemic is considered sufficiently under control? In Romania, just as elsewhere in Europe, the majority of office workers were confined to home for much of the past 18 months. Surveys show many are nervous about the prospect of coming back.

“The point is to reassure them. We don’t want people to panic,” says Gavin Bonner, one of the main coordinators behind the Immune building standard project, which has brought together health professionals, architects, engineers, IT and building managers from around the world to help corporations prepare for post-pandemic life.

The publicly available standard, trademarked Immune, has already been applied to several buildings in the U.K. Its developers include the leading Romanian property company Genesis, also the H3 landlord, and the project has cost about €1 million (£850,560). More than a dozen other buildings, from the U.S. to Singapore, are in the process of obtaining their Immune certification, according to Liviu Tudor, the CEO of Genesis. The H3 building, as the most protected space so far, acts as the showroom, incorporating all 135 of the recommended measures.

The project is open source “in an effort to pool the best ideas”, says Tudor, who has lodged an application with the E.U. in the hope it will form the basis for a new standard across the bloc, similar to conventional fire safety codes. It embraces everything from technological innovation and scientific knowledge to workplace psychology, he says, and he hopes it will embolden both employers and employees, millions of whom are now engaged in an intense conversation about whether it is safe to return to the office – and if so, how.

Worth reading in full.